


for here we have no time

by Marcia Elena (marciaelena)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, M/M, SPN J2 Secret Santa, Temporary Character Death, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21872956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marciaelena/pseuds/Marcia%20Elena
Summary: Where does Dean go when he dies? Where does he go when he dreams?
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29
Collections: 2019 Supernatural & CWRPF Holiday Exchange





	for here we have no time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [canonisrelative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canonisrelative/gifts).



> I don't even know where this came from. It's mostly gen, but since this is me there's a hint of Wincest. 
> 
> Written for the 2019 SPN-J2-Xmas exchange for the lovely and super talented canonisrelative.

In the end that's all there is, Dean thinks. A string of endings. Forever saying goodbye to something or someone. 

That's even truer for him. 

He dies. He dies once, twice, ten times, fifty. He dies hundreds of times. He dies too many times to keep counting. 

And it always hurts. Not so much his body as it falls apart in a myriad of ways. That _can_ be painful--the sweet plunge of a blade or the crack of tired bones, the gaping kiss of a bullet or the fangs of a hungry monster. It can also happen so fast his brain doesn't have time to process the information into physical agony. 

No. What hurts always and unbearably despite how many times he experiences it is leaving his brother behind. 

The last thing on Dean's mind (the last beat of Dean's heart) is always _Sam_.

*

"I'm scared," little Sammy says. "Dean," he calls. "I had a bad dream," he cries in the dark.

It sends a shiver through Dean's body. 

"S'okay," Dean mumbles. Pulled from dreamscapes that he can't remember his mind feels fuzzy. His skin feels too tight and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. The glass of water on his nightstand sits there untouched. 

"Dean," Sammy calls again. 

And Dean gets up. His feet are tangled in the covers and he has to kick at them, and in the small hours when it could be either night or morning that seems to take forever. Dean's uncoordinated, limbs heavy and sluggish as if he's still asleep. As if he hasn't moved his body in years. 

But he gets up. He crosses the short distance between his bed and Sammy's and crawls in next to him. He gathers his brother's thin frame in his arms, splays his hand against Sammy's back. He buries his nose in Sammy's hair and smells shampoo and fear.

Sammy's hair is tangled and sweaty. His t-shirt is plastered to his back and Dean traces the shape of his spine underneath cheap cotton and hallow skin, feels Sammy's jackrabbit heart beating like it wants to run straight into Dean for safekeeping.

Dean doesn't know how to tell the boy in his arms that he's been carrying him inside him since the night their mother burned. That's not something he can articulate even to himself; it's just something he _knows_ , a love that blossoms in his gut and wraps around his soul in a vibrant-green grip. 

"S'okay," Dean repeats into Sammy's hair. "I'm here, Sammy. I'm here." And he hums ragged lullabies until Sam drifts off, tucked against him like a treasure. 

In the stark light of morning Dean can't remember ever falling asleep. 

He can't remember staying awake, either. 

*

He's in a rowboat again. 

It's not always like this. Sometimes he breaks through to the surface with a heaving gasp, his lungs on fire and saltwater in his eyes. He'll look around and see nothing but the rippling face of the ocean and the shadow of the sky upon it. 

It's dusk; or maybe it's dawn. Dean can never tell which. The stars are a faint shimmer above him, softened by the light of a sun that's always just below the horizon. 

The oars in his hands are bloody and his fingers feel stiff and his palms throb with a dull ache. It's strange, so strange and cruel how even in death there's still blood and breath in him. It's cruel (and not strange at all) how even now Sam is still an ember burning in his chest where his heart should be. 

He rows. He rows because there's nothing else to do. He rows even though there's nowhere for him to go. This is all there is here, the rise and fall of the ocean around him and the bottomless abyss underneath it. Dean's swam up from it time and again; the terror of it is unforgettable. 

He rows. He hums into the silence, _row, row, row your boat_. He hums. He rows. 

He wonders if life had been the dream after all.

*

Sam's older now. No longer a little boy. He's gone through so many phases growing up, chubby tot and underfed kid, beanpole teenager and broad-chested young man. But he's older now. Not _old_ , not unless one counts Hell years, and Dean doesn't. Because that would mean that Sam's older than him and that can't be. Sam will always be his baby. He'll always be _Sammy_ to him.

Sam ( _Sammy, he'll always be Sammy_ ) is too thin again. Not enough bacon and too much heartbreak. He stills has bad dreams and Dean knows they're worst than they've ever been, but Sam doesn't call for him in the night anymore. 

Tonight, though. Tonight Dean wakes up with Sam pressed against him in bed. 

Dean kicks at covers that aren't there. There's only Sam draped around him, knee pushed between Dean's thighs and arms looped around him like vines. 

"You were having a nightmare," Sam murmurs against the nape of Dean's neck. "I could hear you all the way from my room. You were calling out my name."

Dean blinks into the inky space before him. "You could hear me in your dreams?"

There are no windows in the bunker. No way to tell night from day without a clock. If the power went out permanently Dean knows they could find their way outside through the maze of corridors, but there's a flash in his mind for an instant, him and Sam always taking a wrong turn in the darkness and ending up back in this room, back in this bed where the memory foam would remember the imprint of their bodies long after they were dust. 

Sam's breath tickles Dean's skin and Dean shudders. 

"I think I was already awake."

"You _think_?"

Sam's shoulder brushes against Dean when he shrugs. Neither one of them says anything else. 

Time doesn't exist in the dark. Dean lies in Sam's arms and feels Sam's heart against his back. He's tired enough that he doesn't feel fully awake and aware enough that he's not really asleep. This is what his brother must have meant, then. This in-between state. 

In the liminal quiet Dean thinks there's a conversation happening between his heart and Sam's. With his eyes closed and Sam's breaths buoying him Dean can almost understand it. 

*

Here he is, then. Back in the water. 

Undercurrents tug at his legs and he kicks, frantic and furious and always reaching up, up, _up_ toward the ruddy light. It's pitch black and there's no hint of it in these depths but it's there, it has to be there. 

He's exhausted when he finally comes up into air. It's just him this time, no rowboat, no oars, nothing to cradle him, nothing for him to hold on to. He floats on his back and cries, adding his tears to this heaving sea that keeps curling over him, trying to claim him, drown him, keep him. 

_Sam_ , Dean thinks. _Sammy_. It tugs at the glowing thing in his chest, relentless and beautiful. 

The water should take the weight from him. That's how it should work. But it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. If anything he feels heavier. 

Dean looks up at the sky and he _longs_. 

He won't remember this when he's alive again. He never does.

But he'll see his brother again. He'll see his Sammy and everything will hurt again. 

Everything hurts now, too.

*

Dean's dreaming. He knows he's dreaming because he's falling _up_. There's an ocean far below him, an endless expanse, deepest indigo under crimson-stained skies. Looking down makes Dean dizzy so he turns his gaze upon the sights above and he falls, he falls, he keeps falling toward the stars. 

He wakes up with the dream still in his head. His blankets are twisted around his feet but he kicks them away without trouble. 

He doesn't turn the bedside lamp on when he gets up, just pads barefoot to the door, the thin strip of light underneath it showing him the way. 

The hallway leads him to Sammy's room. Dean opens that door too, stands in the threshold and listens to his brother breathing in the dark. 

He thinks his heart is asking him something. He thinks Sam's heart might know the answer. 

Dean's still standing there when the lights in the hallway turn red.

***


End file.
